I wrote in glowing terms here a few months ago about The Yes Album which I’d never heard before and really enjoyed. Sadly Close to the Edge didn’t repeat the trick…

Yes to Yeats, the great Seamus Heaney, and Belfast’s contemporary of Auden, Louis MacNeice. Here’s his Prayer Before Birth…

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat […]

Fine as it is,so, no

I don’t support him as the Labour leader, and I don’t like his take on Brexit. But given the choice of the current Labour Party front bench or the Tories under May, Johnson, or Davis, I would prefer him. Lesser of […]

My first reaction is that this feels like one (or in a few exceptional cases two) records by major female artists rather than anything like the best 150. Did I miss Kate Bush, Armatrading, Chapin Carpenter, […]

I know I’m a stuck record about this, but it’s still Marling’s Semper Femina for me. A good friend recommended Roger Waters’ record to me the other day but our tastes are somewhat divergent….

Agreed re Winkleman and Norton who are brilliantly professional at what they do. But either way, these guys are paid not simply on their competence, but on their place in the market and whether or not the public […]

It’s nonsense, and clearly a politically motivated attempt to undermine the BBC’s role by those who think broadcasting in this country should be purely left to the marketplace. They hate the fact that for all it’s […]

Federer, surely the greatest and most beautiful tennis player ever. But the star of this Wimbledon was Garbine Muguruza who looks like she could be the dominant player of her generation.

And then there was the time Olivia Harrison bought along a very young Dhani to see the Sooty Show…..

I was once working at a venue putting on a David Essex gig, and had the pleasure of escorting Jeremy Irons and his fragrant and very gorgeous wife Sinead Cusack to their seats.

Yes seconded. Always had Chris Barber down as a trad jazz imitator until I saw him live – great, serious musician, with a fantastic band. Guitar was an important part of it, which I always loved – saw them with […]

I will readily admit to something in my eye as Newman – now an old man himself – played the song he wrote for his dying father which hits me so much more than it used to, now that my Dad has died too. As he said […]

Seen

Kraftwerk. Technically brilliant show, of course, but never been a fan and this didn’t convert me.

Am three episodes into Jimmy MCGovern’s Broken and it’s superb, the second episode in particular. […]

I’ll be honest I probably haven’t listened to them for forty years or so, and am inclined not to go back because I fear these naysayers may prove to be right. At the time though I thought they were fantastic.

It is indeed. Lovely version, that.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band is a case of a band whose brilliance manages to eclipse the utter terribleness of their name

The Dead Kennedys. Additional demerit points for having a lead singer who thought Jello Biafra was a good pseudonym to adopt.

I refer you to page one of Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments:

Scraping Foetus off the Wheel. (- Foetus, said Outspan. – That’s the little young fella inside the woman, isn’t it?
– Yeah, said Jimmy.
-Aah, that’s […]